Flowers From The Storm (42 page)

She had to make a conscious effort not to bite her lip. There was no guessing what the staff here had been told about Jervaulx’s affliction, or if they knew anything at all. It would not be possible to hide for long.

Calvin Elder looked a solemn inquiry at her. “Will a valet be required, Your Grace?”

His expression said that it was unusual, unwelcome, and against all natural expectation—and that such oddities and anomalies were under particular scrutiny in the present circumstance.

“No,” she said.

He bowed and withdrew.

As soon as he was gone, Maddy wished he were still there with her. The candle he’d lit for her cast feeble light, doing little more than making the bed seem twice as large by its shadow on the ceiling. She quickly changed into her night rail and carried her dress and the candle into the smaller dressing closet off the bedchamber.

As she was laying out her dress, she heard a sound in the bedchamber. She hastened out, glad of any company, expecting the duke.

There was no one there. Something creaked behind her. She whirled around. The door of the dressing closet stood open, black now, empty. She didn’t want to go back in it; she didn’t want it to stand open like a gaping mouth. She slammed it shut, refusing to look inside.

She set the candle on the bedside table, knelt down, and prayed very hard for common sense. She tried to find the Inner Light, but strange sounds, faint shuffles and breathings, sounds like nothing she’d ever heard in other houses, kept dashing her attention away from a calm concentration.

She wished for Jervaulx. For Durham and Fane. For anyone.

Using the gilt and bamboo steps, she climbed into the cold bed. It sank beneath her, enfolding her. The candlelight brushed a deep gleam of color on the underside of the canopy.

She heard footsteps. They were above her—a sluggish step that crossed the room, paused overhead, and then moved on. They did not return.

Maddy’s eyes watered. She squeezed herself down in the bed.

Oh. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She did not.

If only Jervaulx would come.

Christian awoke chilly. The room had gone to shadows, the candles guttering, the fire a red glow of fading coals. It was hard to rouse; he kept drifting back into odd and forbidding dreams, but with a blank habit he got up and spread the coals out with a poker, snuffed all the candles, and went by feel through the door from the drawing room into his bedchamber.

He was half asleep; he vaguely realized it when he couldn’t unfasten his waistcoat. But it was too much trouble. In the dark his bed waited, turned down and warmed. He dropped his coat and his shoes and spread himself full length on it. He rolled over and pulled a pillow to him, got his feet beneath the bedclothes, and slid back down into the deep.

In the morning, Maddy found her own way as far as the immense medieval hall with its dark beams and stone walls. It was almost as forbidding as it had been last night, with its ominous height and echoing floor, the silent beams of light that fell down from slits of windows. Fortunately, she encountered Colonel Fane just entering it with the dogs and had their amiable escort and direction to the breakfast parlor.

Durham was already there, engaged with porridge, which he was eating standing up, looking out a window that had a commanding view of the countryside.

“Good morning, ma’am,” he said cheerfully. “Have some kedgeree? India or China tea? Coffee?”

Somehow, he had her seated at the head of the linen-covered table, serving her himself from the silver dishes on the sideboard, persuasive as always in his active mode. He sat down next to her and motioned Colonel Fane to pull up his chair.

“We can talk private here—servants don’t come unless we ring.” He passed her cream. “How do you think it’s going so far?”

“I don’t know,” Maddy said. “I feel so—odd.”

Fane reached over and patted her hand. “Jitters. Marriage. First night’s always the worst.”

Durham cleared his throat. “Really, Fane. Have a little delicacy.”

“Beg pardon!” The colonel flushed and busied himself with feeding a sausage to Devil. “Forgot myself.”

“What do you know about marriage anyway?”

The colonel kept his eyes down. “Sisters. My mother said that to ”em. Begging your pardon, ma’am.“

“It’s all right,” Maddy said. “I would be glad of thy mother’s advice. I haven’t had my own mother for many years.”

“I’m sorry to know it, ma’am.” His momentary embarrassment vanished. “Too bad mine ain’t here.

She’d set you straight on things in a snap.”

“Well, she ain’t,” Durham said. “Thank God.” He looked at Maddy. “Shev coming along soon, do you think?”

“I don’t know.” She looked down at the congealing porridge in her dish. “After ye left, he fell asleep in a chair. The steward said he doesn’t usually have help when he retires, so I thought it best—I didn’t want to make them wonder about him more than they do already—so I thought…” She pushed her plate away. “So I left him there!” she said all at once. “And I shouldn’t have done so ! It was because I was afraid of the steward and didn’t want to ask where the duke would sleep, so I just went where I was taken, and he didn’t ever come, and I couldn’t find my way back!”

An uncomfortable silence greeted this information. Maddy stood up and went to the window. Through the expanse of wavy antique glass, she could see all across the valley below, the trees and fields in morning shadow, the twisting glint of a river amid gray and brown.

“Look at this,” she said hopelessly. “Look at this place. No one will ever think I belong here. Oh… I want to go home!”

She pressed her forehead against the casement. Devil came and nosed her hand. She pulled it away, hugging herself.

“Archimedea,” Durham said. “Shev’s getting better, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I could tell it. Even in a few days.”

She stared out the window. “Every day is better. When I first saw him at Blythedale Hall, he didn’t speak at all.”

“So—perhaps soon—he’ll be well. He’ll pass their bloody hearing, and this will be over.”

She said nothing.

“There are some obstacles directly before us,” Durham acknowledged. “His family will come the instant I tell them. Lady de Marly—but you know about her. Shev thinks she won’t mind the marriage; I don’t know, but you’d best be prepared for anything. The rest of ”em—no doubt about it— I’d be lying if I told you there won’t be the devil of a dust-up—but if you will just stand firm—I’m sure there’s nothing they can do. Nothing. If they try to haul him away—why, we’ll call in the lord-lieutenant.“

“Shev is the lord-lieutenant,” Fane said.

“Egad, yes—must be. He owns the whole bleeding county. Is he Justice of the Peace too? But never mind—I’ll find out. Just stand pluck—and we’ll get through it to the other side.”

She whirled around. “What other side? There is no other side for me. I cannot be married to him. I cannot be a duchess!”

Durham watched her intently. “You don’t want to be a duchess… or you don’t want to be married to Shev?”

“Thou wilt not understand!” she cried. “I
cannot
! I cannot be either one. I will be disowned when Friends know of it.”

He nodded slowly. “I see.” He took a breath. “I didn’t know that. I knew you were a little disinclined by your beliefs.”

“Disinclined!” Maddy echoed. She turned back to the window and gave a small laugh. Devil jumped up onto the window seat and pressed himself against her. She could not help but stroke his head; it was the only way to prevent him from planting his paws on her shoulders and licking her face.

“The marriage—” Durham hesitated. “That won’t—be solace enough for your loss?”

He asked it gently, but she could hear the argument in his voice. He thought wealth and a castle and being a duchess should compensate for anything.

“Thou dost not understand,” she said softly. “Thou wilt not understand.” She stroked the dog’s silken ears. “I will never belong here.”

“You have to give yourself a little time. You aren’t accustomed. It’s a big old haunt of a place, I know.

Bloody cold, too. We’ve all got lost in it now and then.”

“Oh,” she said, her voice trembling, “I’m lost right now.”

“He needs you.”

“Needs me? Dost thou truly think I can stop anyone from doing anything? Look at me. At this castle.

No one would listen to me!”

She bit her lip hard. She would not indulge in tears of weakness over what was already done. But if it were not done, not truly…

She spoke without turning around. “I ask thee—is there a way to undo this marriage now? Is it too late?”

There was a pause.

“You wish to undo it?”

“Yes.”

“Listen to me,” Durham said. “Just for an instant, forget your religion. Forget everything but Shev. His family will find out he’s here, whether I tell them or not. When they come, Fane and I can do our best, but if he can’t speak, if he can’t act for himself yet—they can put us out on our ear. But you—the Duchess of Jervaulx—you can put
them
out. You can protect him. Legally. Until he is himself again.”

“Art thou certain of that?” She stared at the sparkling river until her eyes began to hurt. Devil left her suddenly, pulling away and leaping down from the window seat.

“It makes sense, don’t it?” Durham asked. “Just let the thing stand. At least until he is well enough to protect himself.”

“Then there is a way to undo it.”

“Possibly.”

“Thou must tell me how.”

“Will you promise to stay as long as he needs you?”

“Tell me how.”

“For God’s sake, Maddy. Will you leave him?”

“Tell me!” She gripped her hands into fists. The river made her eyes water, so bright and silvery in the winter landscape. She could not break her gaze away from it.

Durham said in a low, flat voice, “You haven’t slept with him.”

It was only half a question. Maddy felt her cheeks burning. She shook her head.

“Then don’t. Don’t consummate it. And when you decide you can’t bear with being a duchess and his wife any longer, then come to me, Your Grace.” His voice had gone bitter. “And I’ll tell you the rest of what you need to know to nullify the vow you made.”

She heard the sound of his chair scraping. Then he swore softly.

She turned—and found Jervaulx, with Devil and Cass at his feet, standing in the closed doorway, watching her.

Christian went out on the battlements when he wanted to be alone. He knew them all, kept them in repair and kept them to himself, reserving the keys for every staircase door that let onto the roofs. The higher the better—and the highest tower at Jervaulx put him above anything else he could see. Muffled in his greatcoat, he leaned on the whitewashed stone embrasure of a crenel. From here he looked down on the circuit of the curtain wall to the Whitelady Tower, oldest, square and squat, a border sentry joined by the Knight’s Tower, and beyond that the tower called Phoenix, circling to the Northwest Tower and its range of Elizabethan lodgings rebuilt and redesigned by Christopher Wren, where they’d put Maddy in his mother’s room last night—and Beauvisage and Mirabile, out of sight round the curve of Belletoile that he stood on.

He knew them. He loved them. When he’d awoken this morning, he hadn’t even remembered that anything was different, that he was anyone but the Duke of Jervaulx and master of his life and this castle and his own fate. Then he’d tried to speak to the footman who brought his tea.

He was glad that he hadn’t been able to say anything at all. He’d passed for surly, no doubt, instead of an idiot. But it was only a reprieve; he couldn’t go on silent with the staff forever.

And Maddy. He put his arms on the wall and his head down in them.

In all honesty, it had taken him a little while to remember her. It was when he got out of bed and found himself still dressed that he began to realize. And even then, he’d not been really disturbed, only a little chagrined to have fallen asleep on his wedding night. He’d bathed and dressed, using the services of the footman, who was passably good—and serenely agreeable in the face of Christian’s moody silence, obviously having been selected for this impromptu post on the basis of having ambitions to valet.

On the way downstairs, Christian had thought of how he’d make it up to her. Even at the risk of sounding a dimwit, he determined to make it clear where his wife was to sleep. He’d been considering how to accomplish that when he’d walked in and found Durham advising her not to sleep with him at all.

Christian had feigned not understanding. Easy enough. He’d just stood there, and they took him for stupid. Mute. Deaf. Dumb.

She’d looked guiltily at him. But he’d given her a smile, gone to the sideboard and poured himself chocolate.

I understand, Maddygirl
.

Between white stone and a sky of watercolor gray and blue, the wind funneled around Belletoile, blowing Christian’s collar against him. It was a novel notion, that anyone could dismiss Jervaulx. Not dismiss it—reject it. And him.